'Is It Ethical to Have Children in the Face of Climate Change?' (latimes.com) 302
A climate newsletter from the Los Angeles Times asked the question: Is it ethical to have children in the face of climate change?
And they start by noting many people ask that question: A Pew Research Survey published in July found that among U.S. adults aged 18 to 49 who don't plan on having kids, more than a quarter — 26% — cited "concerns about the environment, including climate change," as a major factor. Of the people over 50 who did not have kids, 6% cited the same reason, pointing to a generational divide that may be fueled by growing awareness of the issue, as well as increasing exposure to worsening climate hazards...
I worry about the well-being of these kids: What kind of world will they live in? Will there be clean air and water? Will it be too hot or smoky to play outside? (To be blunt, the outlook on these matters doesn't look great under most emissions scenarios.) But the other side of the coin involves the well-being of the planet. Is it wrong to add more people at a moment when resources are so strained — when, say, the Colorado River is shrinking to record lows and the global average temperature is soaring to record highs? Each new child, after all, will bring not only a cute little footprint but a carbon footprint as well...
[T]he fact is that climate change is also affecting reproduction. Hotter temperatures and air pollution, for instance, have been linked to increased stillbirths, preterm births, lower birth weight and increased risk of hospitalization for newborns and infants, among other negative outcomes. Pregnant people are also especially vulnerable to climate hazards, which can trigger hypertension and other health issues and contribute to reduced fertility rates.
The newsletter makes many other points, but ultimately concludes that "children, after all, are one of the clearest symbols of how we, as a society, feel about the future." And it includes this quote from the book The Quickening, in which author Elizabeth Rush visits the melting Thwaites Glacier in Antarctic.
"I can celebrate the idea that to have a child means having faith that the world will change, and more importantly, committing to being a part of the change yourself."
And they start by noting many people ask that question: A Pew Research Survey published in July found that among U.S. adults aged 18 to 49 who don't plan on having kids, more than a quarter — 26% — cited "concerns about the environment, including climate change," as a major factor. Of the people over 50 who did not have kids, 6% cited the same reason, pointing to a generational divide that may be fueled by growing awareness of the issue, as well as increasing exposure to worsening climate hazards...
I worry about the well-being of these kids: What kind of world will they live in? Will there be clean air and water? Will it be too hot or smoky to play outside? (To be blunt, the outlook on these matters doesn't look great under most emissions scenarios.) But the other side of the coin involves the well-being of the planet. Is it wrong to add more people at a moment when resources are so strained — when, say, the Colorado River is shrinking to record lows and the global average temperature is soaring to record highs? Each new child, after all, will bring not only a cute little footprint but a carbon footprint as well...
[T]he fact is that climate change is also affecting reproduction. Hotter temperatures and air pollution, for instance, have been linked to increased stillbirths, preterm births, lower birth weight and increased risk of hospitalization for newborns and infants, among other negative outcomes. Pregnant people are also especially vulnerable to climate hazards, which can trigger hypertension and other health issues and contribute to reduced fertility rates.
The newsletter makes many other points, but ultimately concludes that "children, after all, are one of the clearest symbols of how we, as a society, feel about the future." And it includes this quote from the book The Quickening, in which author Elizabeth Rush visits the melting Thwaites Glacier in Antarctic.
"I can celebrate the idea that to have a child means having faith that the world will change, and more importantly, committing to being a part of the change yourself."
I Would Be More Concerned About All The Assholes (Score:4, Interesting)
Who run and control the governments and churches. Media is the new religion and soon AI will control it.
And you are asking about paranoia induced by said organizations?
Get the fuck outta here.
Re: (Score:2)
That's mental gymnastics of a completely new sort. I don't even come across something like that among the usual woke.
Just one little note that makes your house of cards tumble altogether: Children in most developed countries and even probably most others as well, are not capable of entering contracts.
Parents, meanwhile, have many obligations by law and societal code towards their offspring and not vice versa.
Your argumentation is absurd to begin with: None of us can talk to the future, adult kids to get the
Re: (Score:3)
Tell us you hate your parents without actually telling us you hate your parents. Because once we cut away all the ridiculous cruft from your entire argument, all we're left with is the infantile statement: "I didn't ask to be born!"
Unfortunately, you effectively blow your entire argument out of the water yourself:
Nature is not moral at all, it just "is"
Humans having children is literally no different than any other species on the planet that reproduces. It is, quite literally, natural.
If you have children and they required you to provide for them their whole life, would you do that? If not, how would you motivate your refusal with a moral reasoning that would be universally applicable?
This is such an infantile argument. This may come as a surpris
Re:It is not ethical to have children, at all. (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe some variants of religion that include some teachings of Christ are individualistic, but pretty much everything Jesus was claimed to have said was about being kind to your neighbor even at your own expense and living in a Kingdom, concepts which are markedly community based. The "soul" concept is also quite modern in the sense people think of it anyway.
Saying "individualism is a product of Christianity" is misinformed at best, definitely an overgeneralization, and is just trying to sow discord rather than be constructive.
That said, the logic isn't even sound; individuality doesn't come from the idea of a soul in the first place, it comes from uniquely identifiable entities.
prioritize (Score:2)
Re: prioritize (Score:3, Insightful)
"If" my aunt had a cawk she'd be my uncle. (Score:2)
If I did not exist none would be deprived thereby. Your post was purely emotional nonsense. If I didn't exist there would be no I to suffer existing and cling to it only out of instinct.
"Never been a better time to be alive" is (besides being completely first world-centric) is an asserted conclusion.
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I think you've lost the plot. The adults at the table have been discussing how we've been living with unsustainable, growing resource debt for the past 50 years, and when it catches up with us, it's going to make life a living hell, irrespective of how happy you are with today's state of humanity.
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Humanity sure did, our society however didn't. And it probably won't.
So yeah, if you're happy some humans will survive, i admit, that's something, but we could do better?
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You've got to be kidding.
The Last Major Climate Change... (Score:2)
It would be very selfish for me, to have children. Nothing good awaits them in the future.
Imagine if our stone age ancestors living through the end of the last Iceage took that view. Numbers of wooly mammoth were dwindling, large areas of land were flooding etc. and they had no clue what was going on and only the primitive of technology to help them cope with it. However, things clearly got a lot better for their descendants in ways they could not possibly imagine.
So cheer up and take some hope from that. Things can always get worse in the short term but our long-term history is one of endle
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Author needs to see Idiocracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
If people only have kids when they feel it's ethically responsible, the result will become only unethical people having kids, and their unethical values getting passed on, eventually becoming the norm.
Idiocracy is not a good movie (Score:2, Interesting)
Genetics and intelligence are a hell of a lot more complicated than just to smart people having a baby. If they weren't then the human race never would have gone to the point where we could create Albert Einstein's and whatnot.
Parents do not pass on their unethical values necessarily. The ultra wealthy do but that's because it's built into their class. You can't really be a ruling class if you don't have some serious ethical issues.
Re: Idiocracy is not a good movie (Score:3)
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Too bad nobody has actually seen idiocracy. That movie was a flop (in spite of Mike Judge, a comedic genius being behind it) .. however the idea and premise of it is compelling.
Re: Author needs to see Idiocracy. (Score:3)
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It is compelling as satire, but not as science. It basically takes the scientifically discredited assumptions of eugenics as true for comic purposes.
Not one set of Ethics (Score:2)
If people only have kids when they feel it's ethically responsible, the result will become only unethical people having kids
That does not logically follow because there is not one set of ethics. If some environmental extremists believe it is unethical to have kids that does not mean that the rest of us think it is unethical. Indeed, I take the view that we are the best hope so far for any life on Earth to survive the myriad natural disasters that can befall a single planet, including the inevitable death of the sun. So it would be unethical for us to throw that away by not having kids and letting our species go extinct. So I've
Good, and this is why. (Score:2)
If no good humans exist then the fate of the rest does not matter. Unethical values have always been the norm to the extent malefactors go unpunished.
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Re: Author needs to see Idiocracy. (Score:2)
Not to any real extent (Score:3)
"Pro choice" doesn't mean that you select not to have kids, just that if you get pregnant with an unwanted child you have an option. I don't find it at all trivial that keeping an unwanted child would actually cause a person to have more children in general, or children with the same world view.
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'"Pro choice" doesn't mean that you select not to have kids'
Isn't abortion by definition going to from the state of having a child to the state of not having a child?
A dead mother can't have more children (Score:3)
That may be true on an individual level. On the level of an entire state, when the state requires a pregnant person to become septic before a life-saving abortion can occur, this can only lead to more maternal mortality on the whole. A dead mother can't have more children.
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People that stop having children because of climate change have no place in breeding in the first place; Lets stop glorifying stupid people. Climate change *is happening* within their lifetimes, and humanity
net zero parent (Score:4, Interesting)
As long as you take out as many people as you bring into this world, it is perfectly ethical. Or I suppose you could raise your children to be more efficient, use fewer resources, or be the next generation of creative thinkers that invent new ways to feed millions of people. So pick either option, the reasonable one or the unhinged one.
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This. But keep in mind we already have a surplus of food worldwide - this is not a problem today, and while there will be a shift in eating habits worldwide, it wont happen in one day.
More Brains (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're worried about current human technology then you need more inventors.
Imagine if Einstein hadn't worked out the photovoltaic effect and SchrÃdinger hadn't figured out his equation and Borlaug was never a botanist.
The way past it is through it.
Lineage suicide is usually not a good option.
Re:More Brains (Score:5, Insightful)
In the decade where most of those discoveries took place, the world population was about 2.3 billion.
It's currently 8 billion.
My fear is as the population grows from that point, ever increasing resources will be spent on trying to mitigate damages from having that many people. Education will suffer, populations will become more rigid in their ways and less adaptive.
There has to be an upper limit on the benefit of a large population - where the problems caused by a large population outweigh the benefits - and I think we hit it by doubling the population since 1980.
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The population will top out at around 9 billion if we are lucky. Then it will decline.
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There has to be an upper limit on the benefit of a large population - where the problems caused by a large population outweigh the benefits
That does not follow. The more brains we have the faster we make scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughts. The limit is on the number of people we can support. The "problems" you refer to will ultimately limit our population and that is what ultimately limits how rapidly we can make progress.
It is also worth remembering that so far our "brains" have allowed our food production to keep up with a growing population and our growing environmental awareness is enabling us to move to technologi
Quality over quantity (Score:2)
Better Example (Score:3)
Imagine if Einstein hadn't worked out the photovoltaic effect and SchrÃdinger hadn't figured out his equation
Then someone else would have. It would have taken a little longer but both the photoelectric (not photovoltaic, that's solar cells) effect and quantum mechanics were more or less inevitable progressions - in fact Heisenberg developed matrix mechanics which is a mathematically equivalent approach to Schrodinger's wave mechanics and one that is becoming more important recently because it lends itself to numerical evaluation.
The far better example to support what you are saying is to look at the technologi
The only reason (Score:3, Insightful)
Um.... YES (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it's ethical to continue the population of the planet.
It is unethical to do nothing about the condition of that planet, or raze it and leave our children with nothing, or stick our heads in the sand and tell them no one could have predicted this. What's happening with too many of the people having children now? All of the above.
But all having more children means is more dead people if we fuck it all up. Children are just people folks. They aren't some special case scenario. You don't see people in Gaza or Kurdistan asking this question, and it's far worse there than where the people that are asking this ridiculous question live.
They say the meek shall inherit the earth. We need to get over ourselves. Be meek. Guilt will not save us. Counting the angels on the head of a pin won't either. Get meek, own up, put your adult pants on, and do your best. That includes giving your genetic lineage a future. It's fine.
Reconsider. (Score:2, Troll)
Of course it's ethical to continue the population of the planet.
It is unethical to do nothing about the condition of that planet
Sweet irony! The greatest threat to the environment is people.
However, let's put that aside for a moment and say you dedicate your life toward helping all the right causes. It's been made very clear that for-profit companies will do anything in their power to avoid losing profits, even if that means literally razing forests [bloomberg.com]. Sure they will virtue signal all day long but at the end of the day they will squander energy resources [slashdot.org] in an attempt to drive a higher profit. Oh and if you think "the people" will be
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So absurd. Even if things were to go downhill substantially from here, they're going to have an easier time staying sheltered, clothed, and fed than virtually any human born over 100 years ago.
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100 years ago, back when there was only 1/4th of the world population compared to today?
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Your ancestors had none of these, and they still survived.
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Even if things were to go downhill substantially from here, they're going to have an easier time staying sheltered, clothed, and fed than virtually any human born over 100 years ago.
I don't take that for granted for me, let alone any hypothetical children, in that it's already become harder for me to do those things than it has been for me in the past. Average wages are not keeping up with inflation, as usual. We have passed peak oil (except with fracking which pollutes aquifers), peak cotton, peak sand... Most of what's made now is disposable trash that you're expected to rebuy every few years, and that is not only ecologically unsustainable given the extractive basis of our economy,
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Sweet irony! The greatest threat to the environment is people.
You sure about that? Consider: the more people we have, the greater we specialize, the more productive we become, and the richer we become as a species. That's the trend of the last 400 years and especially the last 50. At the same time, the richer we become, the more we can afford to be green. That's why pollution, and resource usage are lower per capita now than 50 years ago in the industrialized west.
It might be the best thing we can do for the environment is get everyone to a US level of prosperity.
war, volcanic eruption, flood, famine, disease (Score:3)
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Looking only at current climate change is tunnel vision. I can name ancestors who moved from one place to another because of war, volcano, epidemic. Obviously they did not give up on children.In fact, I can name ancestors from whom I am a product of a third marriage after the demise of earlier spouses.
Difference is, you literally can't escape microplastics pollution. From the Marianas Trench to the top of the Himalayas, from fish to fowl, its everywhere. And we are already seeing endocrine disruption (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9885170/) . If you want to have children, that is fine. But you should also be aware they are living in a literally unprecedented event in the planets history. And they will suffer in ways previously not seen. And as you will be their creator, you will have to be
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But fun fact if you're not aware - people have suffered the effect of pollution for millenia; from makeup to hats, lead, asbestos and arsenic were components very common until the end of the 19th century; Kingdoms were forged and lost with lead poisoning. The thing is - as you pointed out - you already know what is causing problems; It didn't took centuries, but decades. As a result, diagnostics and treatments
I need website with fewer clickbait posts. (Score:5, Insightful)
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May I recommend https://127.0.0.1/ [127.0.0.1] ?
Took me forever to get Brave to allow me past the invalid certificate. No setting to change (that I know of). Of course, the solution I found on the web was to type "thisisunsafe" on the keyboard while the window has focus. So asinine.
Always something to worry about (Score:4, Insightful)
Throughout history there have been immense risks facing a next generation: war, depression, political situations, nuclear war, economic markets, and perhaps climate change. The list is endless.
As someone with 2 20+ kids, you teach them, care for them, have fun with them and give them guidance. Along the way, if the kids are not overtly lazy, on drugs, criminals, they will learn to figure out the best path. I don't see climate change bringing the world to an end. There will (probably) be some adaptive decisions to make along the way. Will Phoenix have millions of people in 50 years?
I never thought I'd have kids, yet today I cannot imagine not having those 2 pains in the ass in my life ;-)
Seems like a strange question (Score:3)
If the incremental additional misery likely to be caused by a less pleasant climate bothers you; why the hell would you even be thinking of exposing children to all the other flavors of misery that have been established considerably longer. It's not a short list; a lot of it is abundantly unpleasant; and while some of it is uncommon a fair few ugly items are either really common or inevitable.
There has never been a time in history when the 'ethical' case for throwing more meat into the situation could really be very convincingly made in terms of the benefits the child was expected to accrue; so it seems odd to only suddenly be worrying about the deal getting incrementally worse; rather than the myriad ways in which it has always been pretty dire.
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Hint: this one concerns the fundamental viability of sustaining our planet's resources to support billions of simultaneous people. If you can't see how the earth getting damaged irreversibly is not so different than, say the potato famine of 1845, there's not much I can do to enlighten you.
Being a parent makes you care? (Score:2)
If being a parent made you care more about climate change, then older people would care more about climate change since they have more children, and even grandchildren.
That is not how it turns out [pewresearch.org].
Stupid people have stupid children (Score:2, Insightful)
Bettinger' Law of Headlines, and Slashdot on weekends - stupid is as stupid does.
Is it "ethical" to have children born to talentless unemployed stupid people who can do nothing other than breed and vote Republican?
Is it "ethical" to have children born to autocratic authoritarian creeps who want eugenics but don't realize their own inbred children will be the problem?
Only suckers have kids. (Score:2)
Yeah, I seem to have a track record that way. (Score:2)
I guess I'm just a sucker all the way around.
By the way, the home I'm living in was made possible by my VA loan. I don't owe Uncle Sugar anything, and he's been square with me. Funny, I don't feel like a sucker, old weirdos to the contrary.
Is it ever ethical to have kids? (Score:4, Interesting)
You're talking about creating an intelligent, feeling being that may have great joy in life, but also likely some suffering and definitely death.
I'm not sure having kids is ever anything but selfish.
A man was born. He lived, and died. (Score:2)
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The point is, though, that you are creating a sentient being without its consent and with no way of knowing if it will judge it's life as a net positive or negative.
You're making kids because YOU want them, not because they want to exist and need your help.
What happened last time? (Score:2)
17,000 years ago as the glacial maximum was well into full retreat, were the people around at the time asking the same question?
I suspect not.
You could do a One Child Policy like China... (Score:2)
How did that work out for them? Not only did they "overcount" their population by a mere 100 Million, now they don't have enough young and middle age to drive their economy, which is on the verge of collapse.
how ironic (Score:2)
I find it ironic that if you think not having kids is the responsible thing to do, the other people that don't agree with that will be the ones whose genes end up creating the future generations of people faced with the same decision. And their genetics will be more prone to agree to keep having more kids. All while your genes tending to choose to not have kids will die off.
Makes it a bit of a positive feedback / viscous cycle kind of thing doesn't it? Evolution's answer to overpopulation is.... more ove
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>I find it ironic that if you think not having kids is the responsible thing to do, the other people that don't agree with that will be the ones whose genes end up creating the future generations of people faced with the same decision. And their genetics will be more prone to agree to keep having more kids. All while your genes tending to choose to not have kids will die off.
It's a variation of the trolley problem; you're already part of the problem, but you can choose whether you are a willing participa
Idiots (Score:2)
Just straight up slack jawed idiots.
Not logical (Score:2)
I just don't find that argument logical, for a few reasons.
First, you don't know for sure what's going to happen. Yes, we can see trends, but the point is that we can see them. We're a problem solving species and we'll definitely at least try to adapt to changes in the future. We certainly have the ability to affect the climate, but I think young people who've grown up without the threat of nuclear winter don't realize that we can actually force it both hotter and colder, if we so choose. I don't sugges
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That's because compared to today, people were much less educated, got married earlier, raised children earlier, were more religious, and had little ability to communicate globally. Ignorance is bliss.
I think that there's an inflection point of intelligence that, once e
Not that long ago (Score:2)
It was not that long ago that we had no idea what "clean water" or "clean air" even meant until we fucked it up and had to clean it. The world is suffering and survival regardless if it includes grocery stores and running water. This should we have kids bullshit is ridiculous. Stop being so fucking pampered and look back just a few decades and realize just how fucking easy you have it.
of course it's not (Score:2)
Therefore the powers that be always want more people.
Pandemic never hit the construction biz around here. Lot and lots of land development and construction has been non-stop around here since the pandemic. It's like construction workers are essential workers because, they never stayed home.
They're building housing for all those delicious revenue generating people, immigrants largely.
Economic Growth isn't compatible with a shrinking population...
So, I fully expect TPTB to
There's nothing new under the sun (Score:3)
Pretty sure I saw an episode of All In the Family where Gloria and Mike were having this exact debate. 50 years ago. And oddly enough, the sun still rises in the east and we all haven't starved yet.
Because only guarantee in life is suffering. (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
Why?
Consent. The unborn can not consent to being created. Therefore, all human life is created without the consent of those being created. Therefore, it is unethical.
Existence is a terrible burden. Don't put that on your future children.
It's clear humans are a plague (Score:2)
"I'd like to share a revelation I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to another area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the
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Why are idiots like you always so arrogant?
The woke death cult wants to see humanity extinct (Score:3)
“Phasing out the human species by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth's biosphere to return to good health.”
Potential parents who are asking this question (Score:2)
and thinking it is the primary reason to choose whether or not to have children...should definitely not have children.
Children grow up to become adults, and adults influence their own future. They will find ways to mitigate today's problems, and they will create new ones in the process. And thus it has always been.
I suppose, if everyone stopped having children, environmental concerns would certainly no longer be an issue!
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You want to hear a crazy theory? Some adults, who want to influence their own future, think it might be a good idea to not have as many children!
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Children grow up to become adults, and adults influence their own future. They will find ways to mitigate today's problems, and they will create new ones in the process. And thus it has always been.
Except for the first time where that does _not_ happen. You need to look up what a "confirmation bias" is.
It should be the woman's choice (Score:2)
It should be up to the woman whether she wants to have a child, not the government or the religious leaders.
That depends on the numbers (Score:4, Interesting)
1 kid? Fine. 2 kids? Still ok. 3 kids? Getting dicey. More than 3? You are a self-absorbed egotistical monster that wants to destroy the human race.
And that is essentially it. Not a difficult question to ask, actually. Also, having more kids that you can realistically provide for, including education, is highly immoral.
BS (Score:2)
Let's be honest: the large majority of people not wanting children do this for selfish reasons: they don't want to take responsibility, they do not want the burden, they want their time and money for themselves and they have the right of this choice but then they go to bullshit pretenses like climate change and such to justify it. Since the dawn of time humanity was haunted by fear of extinction: wild animals, ice age, black plague but it survived. I used to not want children too because I didn't want to be
No (Score:2)
Climate Misanthropes (Score:3)
Re:I am totally in favor of liberals going extinct (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember you, you're the guy who can't stand to be a week in the house with your kid right?
I'll still pay for his school.
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No, I'm the guy who thinks government deciding my kid has to be sequestered in my home with me instead of going to daycare/preschool/actual school was one of the most self-destructive, anti-intellectual, and downright stupid things I've ever witnessed or read about.
I'm guessing it's because your kid had to be sequestered with you ... kid probably suffered a Geneva Convention violation. :-)
Re: I am totally in favor of liberals going extin (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: I am totally in favor of liberals going extin (Score:3)
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See, I'd rather the right-wing nutjobs went extinct, that way we could actually claim ideological high ground and the liberals would look really silly without a counter-part.
We could band together with the moderate left and get some work done.
Would work the other way round, too. Just cut off the ends off the horse-shoe. Oh the paradise this would be :D.
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So, I was responding to RightwingNutjob's ridiculous proposal that single people should be denied tax benefits.
You seem to be going off on a tangent about the possibility of running out of people. Or something. I am trying to parse this because the format you used is usually used by someone who disagrees with the parent and wants to show the specific reasons why, but in your conclusion you agree with what I am saying and instead talk about finding solutions (either to under-population or climate change, m
semantics matter (Score:3)
Is it really new if you've been doing the same copypasta for several years?
First celebrity: Chuck Norris. (Score:2)
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The population isn't increasing. At least not where you likely live, it isn't.
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WHOA, that's the MOST AMAZING REFUTATION I have ever seen posed by someone who disagrees with some notion! I'm gonna need to get a Ph.D. in logic and philosophy to be able to follow along with the degree of sophistication you've offered here! Please, ELI5!
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Judging by the critical thinking skills on display in your post here, I'd say you have a lot in common with 3-year olds.
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Would you care to base your assertion on logic? Reproduction levels decreases in societies as education levels rise. Given that education levels are rising as a whole, I'd like to see you defend your premise that arbitrary "other people" will be willing to procreate more just because someone else didn't have kids.
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What a bizarre "argument". As if there was some fixed pool of kids.
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What's the reason for stopping with your grand kids? Is it because you won't see them? If the cause for your wanting your kids to have a future is so that they feel happy, then surely they would feel happier if they knew their kids had a future and so on. So the "Beyond that? Don't much care" doesn't make logical sense.
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I think this line of reasoning is understated. If you care so much about the environment that you're wondering if it's unethical to have kids, then you can do the environment a solid and kill yourself. Unless you feel like you're having a positive impact on the environment and you care so much about it, then killing yourself is the logical thing to do. I doubt if more than 1% of people are having a positive impact on the environment. We all are consumers, no matter what. It doesn't matter how much you